Gender pay gap. Unequal opportunities propelled by gender. These are some of the most amplified topics in politically charged circles across the world. Even though some of them are downright unrealistic and propelled by unreasonable expectations, a lot of them are aptly conceived.
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| More women in Nigerian pop culture and entertainment journalism |
The world really is riddled with limitations on women and viral male entitlement/entrenched patriarchy. We’ve seen instances of male executives’ reluctance to promote women into upper echelons of power for lazy reasons as maternity leaves and familial responsibilities.
Nonetheless, other times, some women are entitled and expect things to go their way when they aren’t measuring up — simply because they are women. It is virtue signaling and it should stop. That is however limited to a few areas.
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I sent a friend a Kanye West article, detailing his storied affairs and relationships with women, to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of his debut album, The College Dropout.
Somehow, this article triggered my friend to voice a usually passive topic on the scarce female-driven, diverse content in Nigerian pop culture and entertainment journalism.
While some women already excel in pop culture/entertainment journalism, male writers far outweigh female writers in numbers and consistency of articles - especially in Nigerian music and pop culture journalism. You would mostly find women in lifestyle, news or even sports-related fields, not pop culture — a constantly evolving and conversation-rich field.
Imagine how blissful a female perspective would be during the Olamide, Lil Kesh "Logo Benz" storm.
While it’s easy to put numbers down to male reluctance to grant the ‘access’ of a seemingly ‘masculine profession’ to women, we need female perspectives and voices to articulate issues and canvass issues the male gaze would miss.
Asides that, we need culture appreciation with the riches of the human mind to expand the conversational pallette in the era of bubblegum culture.
That said, the conversation should expand beyond feminism — women shouldn’t limit their conversations to feminism
Feminism is a topic worth discussing, but there’s a problem when you find a way to make all your articles reflect feminism — even when it’s unnecessary. While people want to be politically involved in activism and express grievances, when you overemphasize these topics without purposeful limitation, there’s a tendency for people to get tired.
Human beings have a short attention span and they get weary of phenomena quite easily. Your relevance when you repeat something too often could go from endorsement to pretentious appreciation and then neglect very quickly.
It’s not for lack of care, but a need for diverse conversations and freshness. But hey, maybe I’m just ignorant of what it is to be female and I’m just making noise. Bear in mind, however, that I belong to another minority; Blackness and I feel the same about black lives matter conversations.
We need to take the strength in politically charged conversations and channel them into relevant conversations, not abuse their premise with unnecessary articulation. Womanhood and the female perspective is more than feminism- though feminism remains a huge part of womanhood.
We need more women to break the stereotype in suitable fields
Women are derogated upon and denied opportunities they deserve, and that has made a lot them also conform to this denial and hug easier options without even realizing. Women can excel in other fields than lifestyle, news, and sports.
Asides the complex issue of male reluctance and topical conversations, a lot of heterosexual females are more found in beauty, style, lifestyle, and fashion. While you can’t fault them because they instinctively excel at them, we need more daring females in Nigerian culture and entertainment journalism - producing topically diverse and brilliant articles with consistency.
Noteworthy; writing isn’t usually based of perceived abilities. While some excel at writing on a myriad of topics, others can only excel in one area and we shouldn’t force them to cross. Lest, their quality will be diluted. Thus, if a woman is suited to beauty, lifestyle, and fashion, we should let her remain there.
My clarion call is to the closeted Nigerian culture and entertainment fiends who have so far kept their brilliant pieces on their computers and refused to break out of those shells and let us witness their brilliance.
It’s getting a little tiring to keep seeing male perspectives. The beauty of gender diversity is that it fosters diverse ideas, propelled by nature and natural configuration.
A man will most times never think like a woman and vice versa. The female perspective is seriously needed. Please heed our calls, dear women. We need you.
However, women need employers to recognize this need
Earlier this year, Pulse examined the place of gender diversity in the workplace. It is a necessary reality and employers need to wake up to it.
While we need that diversity to go hand-in-hand with finding deserving women so their win won’t seem like a result of virtue signaling, we need employers to desire the female perspective.
In This Story: #NigerianPopCulture #EntertainmentJournalism #WeNeedMoreWomenInNigerian
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